Video which exists in the form of three separate signals, all of which are required in order to completely specify the colour picture with sound. Most home video signals consist of combined (composite) video signals, composed of luminance (brightness) information, chrominance (color) information, and sync information. To get maximum video quality, professional equipment (Betacam and MII) and some consumer equipment (S-VHS and Hi-8) keep the video components separate.

Component video comes in several varieties: RGB (red, green, blue), YUV (luminance, sync, and red/blue) and Y/C (luminance and chrominance), used by S-Video (S-VHS and Hi-8) systems. All Videonics video products support the S-Video (Y/C) component format in addition to standard composite video.